


cosmos

by thetalkingcrocus



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gender-Neutral Runner Five, Multi, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 17:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14501715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetalkingcrocus/pseuds/thetalkingcrocus
Summary: You fell together like all the matter in the universe expanding at once. It’s overwhelming, it’s dizzying, it’s earths shattered and worlds changed and you’re left with new constellations.





	cosmos

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my tumblr on October 4 2014. Spoilers up through the end of S2.

     The first time you sleep together it is an early snowfall and a two-man tent and some scavenged sleeping bags are not going to cut the chill from sneaking into your bones. Sara unzips her own bag, matter of fact as she always is, and you take the hint, zipping yours: to Sara’s on one side, Sam’s on the other, so you’ve created a pocket for the three of you. He blushes a bit, but Sara insists, gently enough, that you have to keep warm. Frostbitten runners (and radio operators) are of no use to the township. And so you snuggle up like birds in a nest and the snow whispers against the tarp stretched over your tent but despite how much that noise sounds like something that would get your heart pounding, make you too on edge to sleep, you drift off and sleep better than you have since the start of all this (you don’t remember a single dream).

     When you wake up, Sam is curled around you on one side. Sara is awake already, propped up on her elbows as she digs around her section of the sleeping pouch you’ve created for a hoodie to layer over her running kit. She jerks her head at Sam and grins and you give a shy smile back and really, that was the beginning of you becoming a family.

     You try to move without waking Sam but he jolts into wakefulness like a dive into cold water and stammers “Sorry Five,” and chuckles and apologizes more until Sara stops him with a “Nobody lost any toes last night, Sam. Five hasn’t filed any sort of restraining order. We’re fine.”

     He calms down save for the blush blooming at his cheeks and the three of you share a bright moment in the tent before getting up to scrounge some breakfast.

     (It takes three more times for Sam to stop apologizing for snuggling up to you at night and by that time, you’re stealing his hoodies in the mornings, if it’s still cold, you’re crunching the frost on the outside of the tent between your index finger and thumb and grinning wickedly as you press your icy fingertips to his neck. You tried that with Sara exactly once and she grabbed your wrist reflexively and you realize you love them both)

     The first time you  _sleep_ together it’s not, surprisingly under the guise of keeping warm. It’s a beautiful evening and you capture every moment you can for your memory- Sara sitting back on her haunches, hands splayed on her muscled thighs. Sam tracing his fingers reverently over your collarbones, the way each of their lips felt when they kissed you. You think about it then, a little, but you’re too distracted by having them next to you.

     The next morning, Sara’s up before you, as ever. She smiles, slow, and kisses you, slower. You both turn to look at Sam, his bare chest rising and falling with breath, his hair mussed. He’s turned towards you, body curved into a slight crescent.

     “He looks at you like you hung the moon and the stars, you know.” She says, softly, and you kiss her again because you’ve never been much of a talker, and predictably, you don’t know what to say.

     You figure out what you should have said later, but you don’t do anything about it until after she’s gone. Because you understand, now. You’ve mapped out this new universe, are heart and soul deep in it, and you may have hung the stars but the stars themselves- they’re all Sam. Sam is the guiding light, he is more than the way home: he is home. He is the warm feeling in your chest when you recognize constellations, and the comforting feeling of the light in the dark canvas of the sky.

     You’re not sure where you stand, but you do know that if Sam is the stars, Sara is the sun itself. Brilliant, bright, burning (when she hands you her gun, it’s a solar flare). She radiates intensity, emotion, and you bask in it and you would follow her across the horizon like a god in a blazing chariot if you had to. Wherever you go, she’s the warmth of the sun pressing against your shoulder blades and you know she will be there again, you do, even when it’s cloudy.

     When she dies, there’s a solar eclipse.

     You’re still waiting for the sun to come back and you pick your way around your universe by the omnipresent stars. You’re watching them with Sam, one night, nestled close against his side. He’s kindly neglecting to mention that you’re wearing a hoodie that was originally his, was subsequently stolen by Sara, and is now worn mostly by you (her scent is fading from it, but if you close your eyes…) . You explain to him, quietly, that he’s your stars. That Sara was your sun. He kisses your cheek and holds you close and doesn’t know what to say.

     The next morning, he wakes up first. You reach for her arm to tell her of this miraculous event, but, of course, she’s not there. He’s looking at you like… well, like you hung the moon and the stars, and he smiles, soft, like he used to at her in the early mornings, or when the two of you came loping in from the run. 

     “Sara’s … was the sun.” he says, and you nod, blinking sleep from your eyes, “and I’m the stars. That means-“ he looks excited now, excited with the gravity of whatever he’s about to say, “well, at first I thought maybe the moon. But that’s not right: the moon doesn’t have its own light, and it changes, all the time. You’re not the moon, Five. You’re the earth. Steady. Dependable. Warmth and nurturing and sometimes natural disasters.”

     You don’t know how to respond, so you kiss him and hear Sara’s voice, gentle in your ear.

_Ground beneath my feet_ , her voice says, and your heart soars even in its brokenness.

     Your cosmos may never be the same, but there’s a place in them for you.


End file.
